Porn Uploaded To Sesame Street's YouTube Account

Sesame Street’s YouTube page has been temporarily taken down after a group of hackers infiltrated it and uploaded a slew of pornographic videos. It’s unclear exactly how long the offending material may have been up, but by Sunday afternoon, the long-running PBS program's page was replaced with a message accusing Oscar the Grouch and his friends of violating the company’s “community guidelines”.

According to CNN, the usernames of two separate YouTube account holders were posted on Sesame Street’s page and identified as the perpetrators before the whole thing was shutdown, but one later took to his own page to vigorously deny the allegations. It seems strange hackers would be foolish enough to out themselves on the same page they infiltrated, but since I don’t work for the FBI, I’ll reserve judgment.

Regardless of who committed the offense, this whole thing is poor form. I get the impulse to play a practical joke on YouTube, but there’s no reason to choose a blameless target that’s provided wonderful and educational children’s content for decades. Sesame Street should be off limits.

As of press time, neither PBS nor YouTube have released official statements on what happened, but it seems likely they’ll speak on the matter in the next day or so. Assumedly, the company will also restore Sesame Street’s account in the near future, as it seems very unlikely producers willingly took their content in an X-rated, terms of service violating direction.